As he waited to catch a bus in downtown Ann Arbor on a recent morning, 74-year-old retiree Dave Moore recalled the job his stepdaughter turned down due to lack of transportation.

"She had a job offer out at Meijer, but she couldn't get out there," he said, referring to the store on Jackson Road. "It would be nice if they had a bus farther out Jackson, because as far as it goes is Wagner, and that's it. Anything on the other side of Wagner, if people have to get a bus, they're up a creek."

Moore, who lives in public housing in downtown Ann Arbor, said he relies on the bus to get around and the current services work mostly fine for him, but he sees room for improvement.

Ypsilanti resident Daric Thorne, who takes the No. 5 bus from downtown Ypsilanti to work in Ann Arbor every morning, has a similar view.

"Let's face it, traffic to Ann Arbor is terrible, so I'd rather take the bus. The 5 works perfectly for me," he said. "But, if I try to move toward the township area, I have very few options in terms of where the bus goes."

Thorne says he'll be moving soon and he wants to continue riding the bus, but he's found there are limits to where he can move and still have decent service.

Tamara Cruder also described transit services in the Ypsilanti area as lacking while she waited in downtown Ypsilanti to catch the No. 10 bus home from work on a recent evening. A bus had just departed five minutes before she arrived, so she had to wait another 55 minutes for the next one to come.

"I just want it to be more convenient, because I'm late to work sometimes waiting on the 10," she said. "The 4 is good because it comes like every 10 or 15 minutes. The 10, it comes like every hour. That's kind of bad."

Passengers wait for their buses at the Ypsilanti Transit Center on Thursday.Patrick Record | The Ann Arbor News

Somewhere beyond the debate over a new transit tax proposal on the May 6 ballot, there's a shared belief among people on both sides of the issue that transit services could be better in the Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti areas. In fact, the leading millage opposition group has named itself Better Transit Now.

The Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority believes the solution is more funding, which is why it's asking voters in Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti and Ypsilanti Township to approve a new 0.7-mill tax. That would be an increase on top of a 2-mill tax Ann Arbor residents already pay and a 1-mill tax Ypsilanti residents already pay.

The new tax would cost the owner of a $200,000 home an extra $70 a year and would generate nearly $4.4 million in new local tax revenue for the AAATA.

Better Transit Now, which is against paying a new tax, argues the AAATA could improve services by cutting staff and other costs and operating more efficiently.

Examining existing AAATA services

AAATA officials maintain that transit service in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti already is fairly comprehensive in that it serves 90 percent of all households in the two cities, counting households within a quarter-mile of existing service.

In many cases, the proposed improvements would simply make it possible to travel later at night and on weekends, and reduce passenger travel times, though there also would be new areas served and more frequency.

Ann Arbor resident Lou Glorie, a member of Better Transit Now, speaks out before the Ann Arbor City Council at its last meeting.Ryan Stanton | The Ann Arbor News

Ann Arbor resident Lou Glorie, a member of Better Transit Now, argues the AAATA first needs to reexamine its service model. She questions the continued reliance on a hub-and-spoke route configuration where almost all routes start and end downtown.

"The routing is downtown-centric and the AAATA has steadfastly refused to modify the hub system," she said.

Even under the proposed expansion and reorganization, Glorie said, there still would be a lack of crosstown routes that go places other than downtown. For instance, she said, there would be no service on Seventh Street between Miller and Madison.

"None of this makes sense, unless the assumption is that everyone wants to go downtown," she said. "But not everyone in this city lives or plays and shops downtown. Someone living on North Maple may want to get to Briarwood or to Bel-Mark Lanes. Someone living on Arlington may want to get to Plymouth and Green."

AAATA officials maintain that having routes converge at a central transfer location is an efficient model used by cities throughout the U.S., and even with transfers at the Blake Transit Center it's still possible to go anywhere in Ann Arbor in 45 minutes or less.

"The fact that downtown Ann Arbor is also a major destination makes this configuration particularly effective," said Chris White, the AAATA's service development manager. "There are also timed connections to facilitate transfers at Briarwood Mall, the VA Medical Center, downtown Ypsilanti, and Meijer on Carpenter."

AAATA officials said several routes, even some that start downtown, already provide direct service to various destinations without needing to go downtown. The five-year plan that would be funded by the new millage proposes new crosstown routes on North Maple/Stadium in Ann Arbor and Harris/Ford in the Ypsilanti area.

Passengers wait for their buses at the Ypsilanti Transit Center on Thursday.Patrick Record | The Ann Arbor News

"It's not pure hub-and-spoke," said Ann Arbor City Council Member Chuck Warpehoski, who is supporting the proposal. "Some people call it a pulse model because there are multiple pulse points where you can make your transfers."

Warpehoski, whose wife works for the AAATA, said the fact that Ann Arbor is not laid out on a grid constrains some of its options, but service frequency also is a factor.

For example, he said, if someone wants to go from North Maple to downtown, the AAATA can run a bus every half hour. But, he said, if that was split up so there was one route to downtown, one route to Briarwood Mall, one route to Plymouth Road, and one route to South Industrial Highway, all of a sudden — with the same number of buses running — trip frequency would drop to every two hours.

"That works significantly less well," Warpehoski said. "So the hub-and-spoke model, by providing people rapid, more frequent service, and a density of transfer points downtown, given the level of funding we're able to provide, provides better service."

Glorie said it still seems the AAATA has chosen a service model that doesn't serve Ann Arbor residents as well as it could.

"We have streets that run east and west, and streets that run north and south, and there are many logical places to offer more connectivity," she said. "I want to get the system working for us because we need it to work for us."

What's being proposed

AAATA planners recently sat down with The Ann Arbor News to offer a route-by-route overview of the changes that would be implemented if the millage is approved.

The AAATA has a detailed five-year plan with new and redesigned routes already mapped out, and schedules to show the hours the buses would run.

View full sizeProposed improvements in the Ann Arbor area.Courtesy of AAATA

The majority of improvements would be phased in over a few years, starting this August with later hours of operation on just about every route, and more frequent trips on some routes. Additional service increases would follow in 2015.

Most routes would run about an hour later on weekdays starting this year, in many cases going until 11:30 p.m. or later. Buses on Washtenaw Avenue, which currently stop running at 11:30 p.m. weekdays, would run until 12:30 a.m.

Service on the route serving the Amtrak station in Ann Arbor would be extended until midnight weekdays to meet the last train in from Chicago.

There would be greater increases in weekend service. Buses currently stop running on most routes between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays.

On most routes, service would be extended past 10 p.m. on Saturdays, and as late as 11:30 p.m. for routes such as Washtenaw and Jackson Avenue. The Newport Road route in Ann Arbor would get Saturday service where there is none right now.

On Sundays, buses would run about an hour later, with service ending sometime between 7:15 p.m. and 7:45 p.m. on most routes. The same goes for a handful of areas around Ypsilanti that currently have no Sunday service.

The AAATA estimates an additional 43,000 households would be served on weekends and an additional 35,500 households would be served on weekdays with full implementation of its five-year plan, including expanded services in some communities like Saline and Pittsfield Township through purchase-of-service agreements.

In all, there would be about 57,000 hours of new service for Ann Arbor, more than 8,500 for Ypsilanti, more than 9,400 for Ypsilanti Township, and about 15,000 in surrounding communities.

Paratransit services, known as ARide, also would be expanded, allowing seniors and people with disabilities to go anywhere within three-quarters of a mile of all new routes and during the extended hours of service on weekdays and weekends.

Major reorganization planned in 2016

In May 2016, a major redesign of the service in Ypsilanti and on the west side of Ann Arbor, including new and redesigned routes, would be implemented.

AAATA strategic planner Michael Benham describes the current route configuration as "kind of a dumbbell arrangement," weighted by Ann Arbor's Blake Transit Center on one end and the Ypsilanti Transit Center on the other end.

View full sizeProposed improvements in the Ypsilanti area.Courtesy of AAATA

The two communities are connected by a series of routes, and then a series of local routes branch out from each of the downtown transit centers, in some cases doing large loops.

"And what we're now doing is taking the loops and we're breaking them up into out-and-back kinds of routes," Benham said.

AAATA planners say the current loop configurations require too many residents — Ypsilanti-area residents in particular — to take long and circuitous trips to get where they need to go, and the new routes will be more direct.

In the Ypsilanti area, White said, the local routes have been large loops to cover as much territory as possible with limited resources.

"In Ypsilanti, because of the absence of much local funding, the geographic coverage looks pretty good, but the trips are infrequent, and they're very long and circuitous," he said. "It's service you're not going to use unless you have no other alternative."

Three routes in the Ypsilanti area — Routes 10, 11 and 20 — currently operate as large loops. Two of them take 45 minutes to complete.

A passenger boards a bus at the Ypsilanti Transit Center on Thursday.Patrick Record | The Ann Arbor News

"Some people have a route that's seven minutes to get home, but to get to downtown it's 38 minutes," White said.

All three loops would be eliminated and replaced with six new routes that would offer more direct service to destinations throughout the Ypsilanti area, including the Ypsilanti District Library, Ypsilanti City Hall, Water Street, Depot Town, the county's human services center, the CVS and Kroger stores on Michigan Avenue, the West Willow neighborhood and community center, Chidester Place, Ypsilanti Middle School, and various apartment complexes and shopping centers.

For example, one of the new routes would go out Michigan Avenue and back, while another would go out Grove Street to the Lakewood shopping center and back.

There also would be a new north-south connector in Ypsilanti Township along Harris Road and Ford Boulevard, providing residents with connections to the Gault Village and Sunrise shopping centers, along with various other destinations.

"I think the big change in the Ypsilanti area is that the level of service becomes one that people could choose to use," White said.

An existing route serving Eastern Michigan University would be replaced with a new route connecting to apartment complexes on Leforge Road and other areas.

One of the new routes actually would be implemented this year to provide service to new areas in Ypsilanti Township right away. The route would go south from downtown Ypsilanti out Huron Street to the Kroger store and Paint Creek shopping center on Whittaker Road, continuing to the Ypsilanti District Library on Whittaker Road, as well as the 14B District Court on South Huron River Drive.

White said the route would serve a number of low-income households. The furthest south any buses would go is Textile Road, but the remainder of the township would be served by dial-a-ride services for the entire general public.

An express route via I-94 also is planned from Ypsilanti Township and possibly as far east as Belleville to downtown Ann Arbor.

Rethinking Ann Arbor's west side

The AAATA also would replace three loop routes on the west side of Ann Arbor — Routes 9, 12 and 15 — with several more direct routes along the Liberty, Jackson/Huron, Dexter/Huron, Miller, Maple and Scio Church corridors.

"On the west side of Ann Arbor, ridership has increased to the point of justifying additional service," White said of the focused effort there. "Routes can be split and therefore provide shorter travel times for all involved."

The existing Route 12 loops around Miller and Liberty using Maple Road. A new route running out and back on Liberty would go out past I-94, providing service to condos and other housing there. Another route would go out and back on Miller with a small loop to connect with Skyline High School and a park-and-ride lot on Miller.

View full sizeA look at the new proposed west side Ann Arbor routes.Courtesy of AAATA

Another new route would be a north-south connector running up and down Maple/Stadium, between Pauline Boulevard and Skyline High School, with connections to the Miller park-and-ride lot and various shopping centers.

Another new route starting downtown would cut through the Old West Side on Madison Street, and go down past the Pittsfield Branch Library and Target on Oak Valley Drive, reaching the Meijer on Ann Arbor-Saline Road and a new park-and-ride lot.

"We had a pretty significant primary goal of getting people from this really high ridership area in here to the shopping and job opportunities that exist down at the Oak Valley area without having to go downtown first," White said.

Another new route would go out Huron Street to Jackson Avenue and back to downtown. The AAATA plan shows that route going past I-94, providing new connections to the Quality 16 movie theater and Meijer store on Jackson Road, though that hinges on getting Scio Township to pay for that portion of the route.

There is an existing transfer location near Jackson and Wagner where AAATA buses drop off passengers who can then pay extra to hop on the Western-Washtenaw Area Value Express, a separate transit system that heads out Jackson Road toward Dexter and Chelsea, including a stop at the Taco Bell across from Meijer.

The WAVE comes about every two hours, ending at 6 p.m., and AAATA officials say it's not an ideal situation, and a lot of people choose to walk quite a ways down Jackson Road. Benham described the existing roadside transfer area as "kind of a mud puddle" and said it would be a lot better if AAATA buses were able to make transfers to the WAVE at Meijer where there's warm shelter, bathrooms and phones.

AAATA officials say a number of other areas in Ann Arbor would see a notable increase in transit services, including the Water Hill neighborhood, Skyline and Pioneer high schools, the neighborhoods around Lawton, Dicken and King elementary schools, and along Jackson and Dexter, including Arbor Landings apartments.

The Ellsworth Road route also would see improvements to provide more direct service to the Costco store at State and Ellsworth, as well as more frequent trips.

The plan also includes adding an extra bus on Plymouth Road to improve on-time performance in the middle of the day.

Up to voters to decide

The AAATA's proposal has a strong showing of support from dozens of groups and individuals throughout the three communities, including business and religious leaders, elected officials, environmental organizations and civil rights groups. It's opposed by Better Transit Now and the Washtenaw County Republican Party.

AAATA CEO Michael FordRyan Stanton | The Ann Arbor News

Glorie said she's pretty sure the millage is going to pass, and she thinks that's too bad for Ann Arbor. She said she's looked at the proposed routes and she's still not convinced services would improve in any meaningful way.

"My fear is that by rubber-stamping this millage request now, the people of Ann Arbor will never have a transportation system that will help get us out of our cars," she said.

AAATA CEO Michael Ford says he feels his agency has put forward a good plan and now it's up to voters to decide.

"This plan really was a culmination of four and a half years of going out and talking to people, hearing what they wanted," he said. "We took a lot of time going through many areas that we had never been before, just talking to people about their needs and what their vision was for the future. I think this plan really starts to address that."